I was not less delighted when, after a conference a few weeks later with Messrs. Folks, Kingsbury, and Devine, concerning the most important of these reforms--the drastic revision of the health laws--the four of us went up as a delegation to see Sulzer, and secured his hearty support. The situation was, that the health laws of New York State were being administered by five or six hundred health boards in the various villages, and an investigation had shown that a very substantial percentage of the health commissioners in these places were undertakers. We proposed a centralized state health board headed by a state health commissioner. Sulzer agreed to back the plan. He went further and said to me: “What’s more, you may name the Health Commissioner.” We thereupon returned to New York, and my friends drew up a draft of new laws to regulate the public health. This codification was enacted by the legislature at Sulzer’s insistence, and has since been adopted by more than thirty states. We agreed that Dr. Hermann M. Biggs was the ideal man for Commissioner, and I asked Sulzer to appoint him. He then hedged on his promise and selected another man, though Dr. Biggs was later appointed and made a national reputation in the office. Sulzer did, however, make good a part of his promise. He felt it necessary, for political reasons, to appoint two or three men of his own choice to the State Board of Health, but he allowed us to name the majority membership. Sulzer’s administration thus started auspiciously. He saw, what every other shrewd observer also saw: the dazzling opportunity which lay before any politician who stood out boldly for the people as against the bosses, and who could embody this independent position in practical measures of reform. The lesson of Roosevelt’s career had just been confirmed by Wilson’s. But the experiences I am now narrating ultimately convinced me that Sulzer did not have the courage which had carried these two men of eminence. He “played politics,” and got no further than an unconvincing imitation of their methods. He continued to assure us Independents, on the one hand, that he was whole-heartedly converted, and that he had broken entirely with his past. But later we found out that he was at the same time assuring his friends in Tammany that “I am the same old Bill.” He tried to imitate Roosevelt’s success in another direction, in building up a personal “machine” in New York State by coquetting with the up-state Independent Democrats, to whom he allotted a share of the patronage which he controlled. Ultimately, of course, both sides found him out for what he was. When they did, the Independents simply dropped him. Tammany, however, exacted a swift and terrible vengeance. If discipline were to be maintained within the wigwam, not even the appearance of open revolt could be tolerated, and Tammany proceeded to make a spectacular example of Sulzer.